1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to article dispensing and, more particularly, to a dispenser which can be used by a retailer to dispense retail products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An analysis of the retail industry demonstrates the inventorying and merchandising of many high volume, low profit, high pilferage items. A deeper analysis of the retail industry indicates that net profits in supermarkets average about one cent per dollar as a national average. In smaller convenience stores, national averages of net profits are approximately three and one-half cents per dollar. In this very highly competitive field, innovations are made infrequently, even though frequent innovation is badly needed. Accordingly, one of the main concerns of the retailer is the need to reduce or eliminate problems which reduce the profit realized by the retailer. Such problems include product theft, effective utilization of floor space, unnecessarily high levels of inventory, and the maintenance of a profitable level of labor and other types of overhead. At the same time, the retailer must provide competitive pricing in this highly competitive business, properly service the retailer's customers, and realize a profit level sufficiently high to maintain the retailer in business.
Generally, products which are offered for sale to the consuming public are physically located in areas where consumers shop. The products are made visible to the consumers to create a desire in the consumer to purchase the product. Supplies of the products are maintained in the stores which are adequate to satisfy the perceived demand for the product by consumers to encourage sales by permitting consumers to leave the store with the product they purchased, rather than requiring the consumer to purchase the product for later delivery to the consumer. However, such accessibility to the consumer of relatively large supplies of products encourages some consumers to steal products, especially small easily concealable products, rather than to purchase them. Obviously, each theft of a product reduces the income of the store owner. The store owner's loss from theft is aggravated where the types of products stolen are those which are sold in high volume by the store owner and which generate a small profit for each sale. For example, for each package of cigarettes stolen from a store owner, it is necessary for the store owner to sell approximately 80 additional packages of cigarettes to recover the store owner's cost of the stolen pack. Product theft is paid for from net profits, normally one percent on the dollar in supermarkets. Further, because of the high demand for cigarettes and the ease with which a pack of cigarettes can be concealed by the consumer, the theft of cigarettes in great quantities is widespread. Because the profit realized by a store owner from the sale of a single pack of cigarettes is low, the theft of cigarettes presents a major problem to store owners.
A second major problem facing retail store owners is maintenance of an inventory of products that is sufficiently high to meet the demand of the consuming public, but that is not so high that an excessively great amount of money is represented by the inventory on a continual basis. Although many types of inventory control systems and apparatus have been devised, they are usually complicated and expensive and are used to regulate the inventory of only large retailers. Smaller retailers generally cannot justify the cost of such a system to control the inventory of all their products. However, small retailers may have problems maintaining an adequate inventory of selected types of products and, accordingly, could profit from an inventory control system that can be applied on a product-by-product basis.
Further, the manner in which most large retail stores, such as supermarkets, receive new products and convey them to areas of the store for purchase by consumers creates a problem for the store owner. In particular, products are received by the supermarket and stored in a stockroom until needed on the shelves. Theoretically, as the products are needed on the shelves, stock personnel transfer the products from the storerooms to the shelves. However, any delay in making the transfer results in an out of stock condition in the store and lost sales. The problem is aggravated when the product involved represents a high volume of sales over a short period of time, requiring frequent transfer of the product from the storeroom to the shelves. Regarding the sale of cigarettes by supermarkets, the problem is further aggravated by the fact that checkout clerks are generally responsible for making the transfer of cigarettes from the stockrooms to the shelves, which are generally located at the checkout counters in an attempt to reduce theft of cigarettes by consumers. Often, the checkout clerk is asked for a brand of cigarettes that is not available at the checkout counter but which is available in sufficient supply in the stockroom. Because the checkout clerk is usually under a great deal of time pressure, the clerk is not willing to travel to the stockroom to satisfy the consumer's demand for the product. Instead, the consumer is usually told that the store has no cigarettes of the brand demanded. Accordingly, sales of cigarettes are often lost by supermarkets.
Accordingly, there is a need for a storing device or dispenser which discourages the theft of easily concealable consumer products. Further, there is a need for such a dispenser that provides information relative to the number of sales of the products stored in the dispenser. Further, there is a need for a dispenser that ensures that products are always available for purchase by consumers.